The present invention relates to a photographic mounting device and more particularly relates to a mounting for a camera and flash attachment which is compact, lightweight and universal and may be mounted on a tripod or may be hand-held.
The ideal camera mounting for securing camera and flash units when taking photographs should be compact, lightweight and versatile. The mounting should accommodate most 35 mm cameras and medium format cameras as well as shoe-mounted flashes. Such mounts should provide the capability of using the flash unit for wide area of lighting and support multiple flash units for variable ratio or flash fill lighting as well as for macro and portrait photography. An ideal camera mount should provide the ability to position the camera in either a vertical or horizontal format and maintaining the camera""s lens in the same position regardless of orientation.
In the prior art there are numerous brackets for mounting cameras and flash units. Some allow the changing of formats with overhead wide-area lighting. Most are designed for specific camera models and do not provide the various desirable features mentioned above and are not universal allowing the user to mount various 35 mm medium format cameras.
The following patents show representative camera mounts:
U.S. Pat. No. 4,341,452: discloses a triaxial (dual biaxial) universal camera mount assembly which permits a camera secured thereto to be independently or simultaneously pivotable about three axes: a vertical axis, a horizontal axis, and a central lens axis. The universal camera mounting has a first yoke pivotally nested in a second yoke to form the horizontal axis. The second yoke is mountable to a tripod so that it may pivot about a vertical axis normal to, but offset behind, the horizontal axis. The second yoke has a pivotable universal camera mounting bracket, the pivot axis of which corresponds to the central lens axis and intersects both the vertical axis and the horizontal axis. The yokes are canted and the vertical and central axis pivots offset so that a camera is completely balanced in the mount. The pivots are specially constructed so that the balanced camera can be moved from one position to another, yet it will stay in the second position without need of a locking means. The mount replaces a conventional tripod pan head and permits angular movement of the camera to any position without changes in view or focus introduction of parallax errors as is the case with conventional tripod mounts.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,575,098 shows a flat normally horizontal, rectangular camera mounting base is supported manually by a single handle connected at its lower end to the outer end of a leftward extension of the base near the front end of the left edge of said base, said handle normally extending upright but being pivotally adjustable arm forwardly relative to said extension about a transverse horizontal axis. A flash unit supporting arm extends upwardly from the upper end of the handle at a slight inclination relative thereto to within a short distance of a vertical plane containing the optical axis of a camera mounted on said base. A short horizontal extension extends inwardly from the upper end of said arm, said extension being normal to said vertical plane and bisected thereby. A flash unit mounting screw is provided in said plane on said arm extension and secures to said extension a flasher unit support which is rockable about a horizontal axis normal to said plane.
A right-angled adapter bracket is optionally mountable on the base and pivotally supports an elevated right-angled auxiliary camera supporting platform whereby the latter with the camera fixed thereto may be rotated about the focal axis of the camera to any desired angle while taking a picture. To facilitate rapid assembly or disassembly on the camera mounting base of a camera or of the angular adapter bracket, an adapter slug is screwable onto each of the latter and is quickly engageable or disengageable by a novel spring biased clamp on the mounting base.
The base of the device has downwardly extending edge walls which, together with the lateral extension from the base for supporting the handle of the device, engage a flat surface on which the device is placed so as to support the device with the handle in upright position when placed on a table.
U. S. Pat. No. 4,241,988 describes a bracket for supporting cameras and electronic flash units in an arrangement for high quality photographic techniques. The bracket includes a member for supporting a camera, a pair of members for supporting electronic flash units, clamps for joining the several members together and appropriate threaded knobs and screw members for adjusting the bracket arrangement as well as mounting the electronic flash units and the camera thereon.
Despite the availability of camera mounts as described above there nevertheless exists a need for a versatile, compact and convenient mount.
Briefly the present invention provides a camera mount which has a body which carries a vertically adjustable camera mounting plate. The body may be rotated between vertical and horizontal positions or formats as well as intermediate angular positions. A handle is connected to one end of the body at a quick-release connection. The camera is secured to the mounting plate by means of a camera screw engageable in threads in the body of the camera as is conventional. At opposite ends of the body a ball extends forwardly supported on studs. The upper end of the handle also carries a similar ball. This allows one or more flash unit arms to be attached at multiple locations by means of an adjustable clamp. The clamp allows full range of positioning of the flash-unit arm. The outer or distal end of the flash-unit arm carries a conventional flash shoe mount which rotates and swivels to various flash unit positions on the flash arm.
The camera mount of the present invention may be secured on a tripod or may be manually held by gripping the handle. The mount provides ease of changing from horizontal to vertical format and will maintain the center of the camera""s lens in the same position relative to the mount regardless of camera orientation as a result of the ability to adjust of the camera-mounting plate. Flash units can be attached and oriented for various formats including overhead, flash-filled variable lighting for scenes, portraits as well as macro photography. The device accommodates most 35 mm media format cameras and multiple-shoot mounted flash units. The mount can be made of suitable material such as stainless steel or other materials that are impervious to environmental conditions such as weather and may be used even in underwater environments with appropriate underwater cameras and submersible strobes.